Thursday, November 8, 2012

Laissez-faire Editing

I used to work for the Geological Society of America, editing their Bulletin and
Geology Magazine, where we copy-edited all the submissions according to a strict
style guide. That, combined with the tendency of misspelled words to jump off
the page at me, made it fairly easy to become an editor. However, I'm
what you might call a "laissez-faire" editor. It means I might
correct an egregious typo or two, but I prefer to let writers say what
they are trying to say.

I find basically nothing wrong with "It was a dark and stormy night,"
aside from it being a cliche.

When at a later phase of my career I became a writer, everyone told me
that "you're either a writer or an editor." That is, each requires a totally different
personality. I didn't really find this to be the case. Of course,
in-depth editing might mean patching up structural difficulties or
rewriting passages for clarity. If it comes down to that, I'd rather
not do it for another writer. As a writer, I've had to learn how to
string sentences together, organize them into a coherent whole, and
make sure they are logical. So, I expect this from other writers too.

I am happy to say that I've encountered a number of good writers for
the upcoming "Origins: Colliding Causalities" anthology, and I'll
mostly be keeping my grubby paws off the following
masterpieces. Congratulations to you all!

Origins: Colliding Causalities Lineup

Contents

The Missing Link, Janett L. Grady
Hollow Man Dances, James Beamon
How to Locate and Capture Time Travelers: A Memo, Alex Shvartsman
Five Tips for Abducting a Human Without Being Caught, Draft One, Sarina Dorie
What the Meteor Meant, Neil James Hudson
At War Again, L. Lambert Lawson
Revelations, Soham Saha
Question and Answer, Cathy Bryant
Beginning of All Things, Ahimsa Kerp
Seascape Zero, John Davies
The Origin of Dairy Products, Larry Lefkowitz
Carmilla's Mask, Jordan Ashley Moore
Of Men and Gods, T. A. Branom

Look for this issue December 1, 2012! We'll be rolling it out on
Smashwords and Amazon first, followed by iTunes, Barnes and Noble, and
other distributors.

No comments:

Post a Comment